Inspired by u/idiotista’s Sri Lankan Fish Curry post, this is actually Filipino-Sri Lankan, because I used Bangus (milkfish) in Filipino spices
by Perky214
Inspired by u/idiotista’s Sri Lankan Fish Curry post, this is actually Filipino-Sri Lankan, because I used Bangus (milkfish) in Filipino spices
by Perky214
6 Comments
(1) The jar – Bangus is also known as Milkfish. It’s a mild and delicious fish
(2) The meal – Filipino-Sri Lankan Fish Curry
(3) Opened tin – these fish are so tightly packs that I had to ease them out with a couple of Japanese ice cream spoons
(4) The fish is tightly packed in olive oil with some tomato sauce and vinegar, cucumber, carrot, bay leaf and a couple of peppercorns. As always, I reserved the oil and diced the veg and stirred it in. I also removed the spines with my sardine fork
(5) Mise-en-place for the curry: chopped tomatoes and onions, chopped cilantro, ginger-garlic paste, various Indian spices, Korean red chili flakes, spiced vinegar, the Bangus fish, poured off oil from the fish jar, and whole spices.
(6-16) Make the curry: I used the fish jar oil, carefully keeping the diced vegetables and tomato sauce out of the pan at this stage. If I had added those at this time, the tomato sauce and the vegetables would have burned. I dis add the diced vegetables and tomato sauce from the jar toward the end of cooking.
Toast the whole spices in the hot oil until the mustard seeds pop and everything is fragrant then add onions, and cook them until they start to turn brown. At this point, add the tomatoes powdered spices and chili flakes. Stir everything together and cook it until the tomatoes break down and the oil starts to separate.When you see clear tin oil leaching out of the curry, the tomatoes are broken down.
Now it’s time to reduce the curry to make it more of a dry curry. This curry is not going over rice, so you don’t need a whole lot of liquid curry sauce.
Once the curry is dried out enough to your preference, add the fish and cook for a few minutes. At this point I added sour cream since I did not have the soft cheese that the original recipe called for. I tasted a curry felt it needed a little bit of acid, so I added some Filipino Datu Puti spiced vinegar, maybe 1 tsp.
This recipe makes two servings, so I set aside a second serving for another dish tomorrow.
I didn’t have any spaghetti, so I decided to use macaroni. I boiled the macaroni until al dente and then added the macaroni and a couple of ladle bowls of the pasta cooking liquid to the pan. I stirred everything together and cooked it for a few minutes to make sure that the noodles had taken up some of the curry sauce and were cooked through. Time to put the curry in a bowl and take it to the table.
(17) The bite – YUMM
(18-19) Nutrition and ingredients
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When I saw this post by u/idiotista, and knew I had to try my hand at it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CannedSardines/s/qnncRp4LOZ
I’m so glad I did! I didn’t have all the required ingredients, but I did the best I could, while refusing to use processed American Cheese for the Laughing Cow cheese they used
Next time I’d might use coconut milk instead of sour cream, just because I like a little sweeter curry. I decided not to this time because the fish I used was packed in a vinegary oil sauce, and I didn’t want the coconut milk to curdle.
In all, this was a very delightful curry. I’m not accustomed to making dry curries, but this one was interesting and delicious. A dry curry over noodles was a revelation. I’m looking forward to trying a few more recipes like this.
With respect to the Bangus (AKA milkfish), I’ve enjoyed every tin of Bangus that I’ve tried.
This is the first jarred Bangus I’ve tried, the the first one that wasn’t in a thick tomato sauce.
The Bangas was canned with its skin on. There were no scales left behind that I could detect. I liked having the skin on, since it added more fat and therefore more flavor to the fish.
The Bangus spines were too large for me, so I remove those.
This jar of delicious fish could easily be a substitute for mackerel, for those folks who do not like the dryer texture and metallic tang of mackerel. Milk fish is widely available at Asian markets.
10/10 would buy this jar again. It’s absolutely delicious
This looks so good omg, I always want to try making something with my tinned fish but I always just end up eating it straight out the can lol. Gonna try this for sure
The name “Bangus” is the real story here.
I ate these a lot growing up! Straight fire with rice!
When I tried this jar of Bangus I found that it smelled very, very, muddy.
I watched a whole ass documentary on farmed Bangus and seeing those farms makes u wanna not eat that stuff